The present disclosure relates to wind turbines. Particularly, the present disclosure relates to an active flow control (AFC) system for use with a wind turbine, a wind turbine rotor blade including such an AFC system, and a wind turbine including such a rotor blade.
Although horizontal axis wind turbines are well-established these days, there is still considerable engineering effort going on to further improve their overall efficiency, robustness, and power generating capability.
This research has lead to the most recent AFC technologies, which aim to improve wind turbine efficiency. AFC technologies try to avoid flow separation over rotor blades by actively modifying the wind flow proximate to the rotor blade. This can be achieved by blowing air through apertures on the surface of the rotor blade.
The introduction of such AFC systems has brought about the fact that the apertures used for blowing air eventually collect dirt or impurities. This phenomenon is one aspect of what is referred to as “blade fouling.” Blade fouling can substantially lower the performance, in particular the extracted power of wind turbines.
Many wind turbines are located at remote places, e.g. offshore or in deserts. As service intervals are at minimum half a year with the tendency to get longer, there is a need to keep such an AFC system of a wind turbine clean over a long period of time with a minimum maintenance effort.